As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to dominate global media coverage, many outlets report on the impact it is having on various polluting sectors. Reuters focuses on the severe impact the outbreak is having on global aviation, noting that American Airlines said over the weekend that “it plans to cut 75% of its international flights through May 6 and ground nearly all its widebody fleet”. it adds: “The dramatic announcement by the largest US airline came hours after the White House said the United States would widen new travel restrictions on Europeans to include travellers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, starting Monday night.” Separately, Reuters reports that “airlines [have] called on the British government to help ensure their survival during the coronavirus crisis on Sunday after the US extended restrictions on European travelers to include Britain”. Airlines UK, a trade body for airlines with UK-registered operations, whose members include British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Norwegian and Ryanair, said over the weekend: “We’re talking about the future of UK aviation – one of our world-class industries – and unless government pulls itself together who knows what will be left of it once we get out of this mess.” Climate Home News reports that that coronavirus is “likely to lower a key 2019-20 baseline for average aviation emissions that will force more carbon offsets if flights rebound in 2020s”.

Many publications report on the impact Covid-19 has had on demand and output in key mining and industrial sectors across major countries. Reuters reports that China’s January-February power generation is down 8.2% year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. China’s “coal output decreased 6.3% year-on-year”, too, over the same period. Bloomberg reports that “India’s coal imports registered a decline of 14.1% to 17.01 million tonnes in February in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak”. Axios says that “a number of forecasts show global oil consumption dropping this year for the first time since the financial crisis over a decade ago as the coronavirus outbreak prevents travel and stymies other economic activity”. A separate Axios article notes that “the International Energy Agency is urging governments to weave policies that support climate-friendly energy into their economic responses to the novel coronavirus”. And the Washington Post reports that “pollution is plummeting in Italy in the wake of coronavirus”.

Many publications also carry editorials and comment pieces linking action on climate change to the coronavirus outbreak. In the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Ketcham argues: “We have to start thinking now – right now, today, as you read this – about a liveable, equitable future for our children, and for that future to be realised we must embrace a world that the coronavirus, perversely, is laying out for us. It is a world of less travel, less consumption, one not pathogen-determined but instead created by our own collective self-restraint, humility and altruism. If we learn from the coronavirus, generations to come will thank us.” In the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, Sarah McInerney writes: “The Green Party has decided not to enter government formation talks, saying now is not the time to ‘argue about solar panels’. Bunkum. Now is precisely the time to talk about solar panels, retrofitting, carbon taxes, cancelling road projects, and building more public transport. The Green Party is not going to solve Covid-19, but could use its considerable leverage in Ireland to insist that real climate change measures are implemented; measures that ordinarily would never make it across the line.” In the Independent, Lucie McInerney, says that “like the climate crisis, coronavirus needs a coordinated global response”. She adds: “All nations need to act as one, not by doing the same thing at the same time, as different countries are facing stages of the cycle of contagion – and some have even managed to remain unaffected – but by coordination and communication; by lessons from those countries at a more advanced stage of infection to those still counting cases in just double or triple figures. Unilateral – or smaller group – communication between countries seems to be happening but this simply isn’t enough. A similar approach is needed when it comes to the climate crisis.” In the New York Times, John Schwartz poses the question: “Isolation and other shifts in behaviour during the coronavirus outbreak could also alter our greenhouse gas emissions. But will the changes stick?”

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph says “It is time to suspend – temporarily – employers’ National Insurance contributions, along with green levies, air passenger duty and corporation tax. And none of this should be a ‘holiday’, whereby businesses enjoy a break from payments but have to pay everything back when it ends. Given the depth of Britain’s problems, these ‘debts’ should be written off.” In the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh writes: “Preachy Greta Thunberg and her riotous Extinction Rebellion pals must think all their Christmases have come at once. Airlines have ceased flying, cruise ships aren’t sailing, capitalism is in meltdown…We are also enjoying the consequences of demands by Climate Emergency campaigners – sky-high unemployment, an economic slump and the discovery that capitalism actually works well in normal times.” And in the Sunday Telegraph, Tom Welsh writes: “Will the catastrophe of a virus further the cause of the green catastrophists? Already, proponents of extreme climate action are saying it shows that the public will accept hair-shirt limitations on their way of life should the situation demand it. Globalisation is under even greater strain, with demands for autarky. In short, the virus creates the conditions for a shift to the Left, even as we rediscover the non-governmental ties that bind us. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.”

Finally, in the Financial Times there is a “big read” on the “eight days that shook the oil market – and the world”. Additionally, the Financial Times carries a piece by Nick Butler on why to “expect the oil price to rebound – but with a low ceiling”.

The BBC’s science editor, David Shukman, reports on how “everyone is suddenly going crazy for trees”. He adds: “The UK government has pledged to plant millions a year while other countries have schemes running into billions. But are these grand ambitions achievable? How much CO2 do trees really pull in from the atmosphere? And what happens to a forest, planted amid a fanfare, over the following decades?” He reports from a Forestry Commission project in Norfolk where there are concerns over whether there are enough trained staff in the UK to support the government’s plans for a huge increase in planting, particularly the Canadians, Australians and eastern Europeans who do much of the current seasonal work. Shukman also reports on the concerns of Prof Rob MacKenzie from the University of Birmingham: “We plant lots of trees, we think we’ve done the job, we forget about them, and what we’re left with is a really desolate dying diseased landscape that no one cares about.” BBC News has also published a video of Canadian Shelby Barber, who, at top speed, “can plant more than 4,000 [trees] per day”.

Meanwhile, the Times interviews the new chairman of the Forestry Commission, who says that plans to treble the rate of tree planting will fail unless they are accompanied by a cull of rabbits, hares and grey squirrels: “In his first interview since being appointed last month, Sir William Worsley told The Times that grey squirrels should be renamed ‘tree rats’ and urged people to see them as vermin. He called for the shooting, trapping and netting of wild animals which damage young trees, along with birth control for grey squirrels.” And the Guardian’s letters page carries the views of former MEP Paul Brannen, who is critical of the RSPB’s recently expressed concerns about mass tree-planting, and Stuart Goodall, chief executive of Confor, who says “claims that newly planted native woodlands are much richer in wildlife than modern forests planted to produce wood and designed against high standards is also not supported by the evidence”. (Later this week, Carbon Brief will be publishing a detailed explainer about tree-planting in the UK.)

The Guardian reports that the number of new renewable energy projects applying for planning permission reached a four-year high in the UK last year. It adds: “There were 269 planning applications for new wind, solar and bioenergy projects in 2019, up from 204 the year before, according to an analysis of government data by energy consultancy PX Group. The jump in applications last year was the biggest annual increase in recent years and 75% higher than the number of annual planning submissions made three years ago. There were just 154 submissions in 2016, rising to 185 in 2017. The consultancy said there was a growing appetite among energy companies for new renewable projects to help cut carbon emissions and reach the UK’s climate goals.”

Meanwhile, BBC News reports the latest findings from Carbon Tracker which says that “coal power developers risk wasting hundreds of billions of pounds as new renewable sources are now cheaper than new coal plants”. BBC News adds: “The shift is mainly due to cheaper wind and solar power, Carbon Tracker said. It added that in 10 years it will be cheaper to close down coal plants and build wind and solar plants instead. But the International Energy Agency says coal will remain the largest global power source for years unless governments radically change policies.”

The Times carries the claims of a new report by a free market thinktank called the Centre for Policy Studies. The Times says: “The government’s claim that Britain went coal free for a fortnight last year was grossly misleading because power was being imported from countries burning large amounts of coal, according to a think tank…Tony Lodge, CPS research fellow and author of a new paper entitled The Great Carbon Swindle, said that the claim was false because during that fortnight the UK imported 40.4 gigawatt hours of coal-fired power from the Netherlands via an undersea interconnector.” Lodge also has a comment piece in the Times in which he calls for a “carbon border tax”: “This policy will lead to them reducing their emissions, the return of jobs to Britain, increased domestic production and improved energy security.”

Finally, BusinessGreen reports that the UK government has confirmed that up to £2bn of support has been allocated for businesses embarking on “clean growth” projects overseas through the UK’s Export Finance (UKEF) facility. BusinessGreen adds that the move “follows criticism from MPs over levels of support UKEF has given to fossil-fuel projects in low and middle income countries in recent years”.

Reuters reports that the UN’s aviation agency has approved restrictions for a global program designed to help airlines offset their carbon emissions. The newswire says it is “a move that curbs industry funding for older projects whose environmental benefits have been challenged by climate activists”. It adds: “The International Civil Aviation Organization council approved recommendations to exclude offset projects begun before 2016 while delivering emission reductions through end-2020, ICAO said in a statement…ICAO cannot impose rules but sets standards approved by its 193 member countries. Its 36-member council was tasked with weighing which programs would be eligible under the venture for airlines, known as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia).” (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on Corsia.)

The rate of deforestation in the Amazon in January and February was 70% higher than during the same period in 2019, reports MailOnline: “According to satellite imagery from INPE, Brazil’s space agency, the Amazon lost 181 square miles of forest during the first two months of 2020, compared to 106 square miles lost in January and February of 2019. It’s a bigger increase than was seen in 2016, during a mega-drought that was worsened by El Nino, when an estimated 133 square miles were lost. The findings were first reported by New Scientist, which says Amazon deforestation “looks set to hit a record high in 2020”.

Separately, the Guardian reports that “about 150 people have been killed or are missing following record-breaking heavy rains, landslides and flooding in three Brazilian states this year”. It adds: “Scientists say global heating is contributing to more ‘extreme rainfall’ events in the country, and warned that such disasters could become ‘the new normal’.”

Writing in the Independent, a group of physical and social scientists from the University of Oxford say that the surge in interest about setting net-zero targets is “welcome news from a scientific perspective”. But they add: “However, the atmosphere responds to outcomes, not announcements. The truth is that significant uncertainty surrounds the outcomes of these targets…First, what are you covering?…Second, when is your deadline?…Third, how will you get there?…Fourth, what are you doing today?…Fifth, and finally, how will you stay on track over 30 years of disruptive change?”

In the Guardian, Anatol Lieven looks at last week’s UK budget: “Climate change, if unchecked, threatens the destruction of Britain; yet the new money allocated to combat it is less than one fifteenth of the annual defence bill and well under half the cost of the two Royal Navy aircraft carriers – which increasingly seem to have no national strategic purpose.” He adds: “The task then is to mobilise patriotism by convincing national populations that global heating is a threat, not just to humanity and the planet but to the interests and the future survival of their own countries; and that society, as a whole, will pull together, alleviate suffering and make sacrifices as part of a common effort. If we can’t manage this I very much doubt that liberal democracy will survive what is coming at us down the line.”

In a letter to the Financial Times, Paul Massara, former head of Npower, says: “We need more research and development, including new research centres aimed at addressing climate change, such as the proposed International AI Centre for Energy and Climate Change; but we also need investment in practical measures that can make a difference today, including retrofitting energy efficiency and upgrading new building standards to make them both more energy efficient and safer. The budget was a missed opportunity to accelerate our response to the climate emergency.”

Pierre Noel, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, argues in the Financial Times that “the oil-price crash of March 2020 will probably not last long”, but he says that it could have “major market and geopolitical implications”. He points out that “two fundamental factors…were already remaking oil and gas markets”, adding: “First, the shale revolution has fundamentally eroded industry profitability. Second, the renewables’ revolution will continue to depress growth in demand. The combined result has put the profitability of the entire global hydrocarbon industry under pressure…Eliminating fossil fuel consumption completely would require sustained and costly government intervention. That is far from certain. Meanwhile, though, market forces are depressing the sector’s usual profitability. The end of oil and gas is not immediately around the corner. Still, the end of hydrocarbons as a lucrative industry is a distinct possibility. We are seeing that in dramatic form in the current oil price crash. But this collapse is merely a message from the future.”

In a separate article in the Financial Times, Mark Lewis, who is the global head of sustainability research at BNP Paribas Asset Management, poses the question: “Has Saudi shifted its strategy in the era of decarbonisation?” He says: “The current volatility in oil markets does not change the fundamental point: from now on, oil will increasingly be competing with the deflationary dynamics of renewable energy, and of all the world’s oil producers, Saudi Arabia is by far the best positioned to respond to this challenge.”

And, for Vox, David Roberts zooms in on “four astonishing signs of coal’s declining economic viability”. He concludes: “In the US and across the world, coal power is a dead man walking. It stumbles on because, though it has completely lost its economic advantage, it still retains considerable social and political power. It survives on sheer momentum, market distortions, long-established political relationships. The tidal force of economics will erode those advantages eventually, but policymakers would be smart to use the current downturn, and the need for stimulus, as an occasion to hasten that transition.”

Increased weather variability in winter could have contributed to the spread off a deadly influenza epidemic over the northern mid-latitudes in the winter 2017-18, a study finds. The study challenges the previous assumption that warmer winters driven by climate change could “reduce influenza epidemic-caused mortality”, the authors say. “We further show that climate model projections reach a consensus that the rapid weather variability in autumn will continue to strengthen in some regions of northern mid-latitudes in a warming climate, implying that the risk of an influenza epidemic may increase 20% to 50% in some highly populated regions in the later 21st century,” the authors say. The study does not consider the current Covid-19 outbreak.

Rainfall in west Africa faces an uncertain future – with some projections suggesting the region will experience an overall increase and others suggesting rainfall will decrease significantly over the Gulf of Guinea in spring, a study finds. Using climate models, the authors adds: “Some changes in precipitation characteristics are consistent for both sets of models. In particular, precipitation frequency is projected to decrease in spring over the Gulf of Guinea and in summer over the Sahel, but precipitation is projected to become more intense.”